Wednesday, May 9, 2012

John Lanchester on Marx

I know very little about Karl Marx, but this beautiful essay
by John Lanchester convinces me that his analysis of capitalist
economics was indeed profound to the core, right, wrong, sometimes
short-sighted, but penetrating and still relevant to our situation
today. Very much worth 20 minutes of your time:

Consider these passages from The Communist Manifesto, which Marx wrote with Engels in 1848, after being kicked out of both France and Germany for his political writings:

Capitalism
has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created
enormous cities. Capitalism has agglomerated population, centralised
means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands.

Capitalism has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment’.

Capitalism
has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has
accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts
and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the
shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades. Capitalism has
created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all
preceding generations together.

Capitalism
cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of
production, and thereby the means of production, and with them the whole
relations of society. Constant revolutionising of production,
uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting
uncertainty and agitation distinguish the capitalist epoch from all
earlier ones. All old-established national industries have been
destroyed or are daily being destroyed.

In
place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we
find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of
distant lands and climes.

Commercial
crises put on trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the
entire capitalist society. In these crises a great part not only of the
existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces,
are periodically destroyed.

It’s hard not to
conclude from these selected sentences that Marx was extraordinarily
prescient. He really did have the most astonishing insight into the
nature and trajectory and direction of capitalism. Three aspects which
particularly stand out here are the tribute he pays to the productive
capacity of capitalism, which far exceeds that of any other
political-economic system we’ve ever seen; the remaking of social order
which accompanies that; and capitalism’s inherent tendency for crisis,
for cycles of boom and bust.

6 comments:

Sounds more like the talk of a tarot reader. He uses all of the right words and talks about the things that you can see but provides only the insight that is already in the mind of the reader. The 19th century saw numerous financial crises. To call them "inherent" doesn't add much to the conversation.

I am not sure I buy into the "capitalism is in crisis" concept due to running out of resources - one of the first things I learned in economics is that we study it because people have unlimited wants and the world is a finite place that cannot satisfy everything. We have always had limited resources.

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This blogexplores the potential for the transformation of economics and finance through the inspiration of physics and the other natural sciences. If traditional economics has emphasized self-regulation and market equilibrium, the new perspective emphasizes the myriad positive feed backs that often drive markets away from equilibrium and cause tumultuous crashes and other crises. Read more about the idea.

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Physicist and science writer. I was formerly an editor with the international science journal Nature and also the magazine New Scientist. I am the author of three earlier books, and have written extensively for publications including Nature, Science, the New York Times, Wired and the Harvard Business Review. I currently write monthly columns for Nature Physics and for Bloomberg Views.